Quantum Clone Leap Episode 4: A Leap Down Under
by Psychoflop
Summary: Dr. Beckett Leaps into previously mentioned but never seen clone, Alex Williams.


p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"emTheorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists from the Dyad Institute into the desert to develop a top secret project known as QUANTUM LEAP. Pressured by neolutionists to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was 1 of the clones from another Dyad project known as Project Leda. Fortunately, contact with his own time was made through brainwave transmissions with Al, Sam's monitor and project observer, who appeared in the form of a hologram that only Doctor Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from clone to clone, putting things right that the Proletheans made wrong and hoping each time that his next leap...will be the leap home./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: underline;"Act 1/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emBased on the smells, this reminds me of the time I leapt into a trapeze catcher at the circus. But with a network of blue mats under my feet, I know that I'm on the ground. Gymnast, maybe?/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""span style="font-style: normal;"OK Alex, 3 steps running, dive to handstand, push off, 1080 corkscrew, land on both feet as together as possible"/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Based on the Burgundy Adidas Varsity Track Suit that this person was wearing, Sam assumed that this was the team's coach. But the thing that caught Sam's attention was the coach's voice and the voices of all of the other people that were around him (teammates, assistant coaches etc.)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emAustralia, I'm in Australia! This is a first for me./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""ALEX! Pay attention! It wasn't easy for us to get this practice time!" shouted the Coach. Sam nodded, then said "Got it, 3 steps running, dive to handstand, push off, 1080 corkscrew, land on both feet as together as possible."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""emI'm Australian too, amazing!"/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Relax, it's only a spot on the Olympic team on the line" said the coach while smiling./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Oh boy"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emI did a fair bit of tree and fence climbing when I was a kid back home in Elk Ridge, Indiana. I even liked being on the high school basketball team as a break from all of my studies and chores on the farm, but gymnastics was never anything that I even tried. Not because I felt I was too macho, far from it. I just only had so much time between school, basketball and my daily chores on the farm, I didn't have time for anything else, especially after Tom left home for Vietnam./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emI think the last time that I did anything even close to gymnastics was the balance beam when I was in the fifth grade. It was easy being a few inches wide, but this is a floor routine, and I've never flipped in the air intentionally (not even when I jumped the car to defend a girl's honour in one of my first leaps). Even when I was a trapeze artist in the circus, I just did the catching. I've never completely gotten over my fear of heights, so I guess I should be grateful that I don't have to do the uneven bars, or the trampoline (which I think is kind of new in the Olympics, based on when I am). And as always, I was wondering where Al was. Why couldn't Dyad fix the tracking circuits in Ziggy to find me faster? In their defence, Ziggy is effectively using a GPS with a temporal co-ordinate that's older than pretty much every other GPS ever made./em/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""WILLIAMS! Before the Athens games, if you please" shouted the coach. The rest of the team giggled. Sam frantically searched around for Al, but found something just as sufficient to buy him some time. He extended his arm northeast, particularly, his left index finger./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Has that mat always been missing a corner?" he asked. The giggling immediately ceased, and the coach switched from a stern taskmaster to someone Sam could best describe as a concerned father./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Good eye, Williams. I'll get one of the other mats out of the trailer to replace it, that could have injured someone. Everyone take 15 minutes, don't go too far" said the coach, who nodded and smiled at Sam. Sam non-verbally then pointed at the ladies room, to which the coach nodded in acceptance. Sam was about halfway to the ladies room when the all too familiar "Vwoooshing" noise came to him, with Al emerging./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Oh you lucky bum, getting to practice with a Pre-Olympic gymnastics team. That comment was made for appreciating the athletes and not because I'm horny" said Al reassuringly. Sam actually believed him for once, and motioned for Al to join him in the ladies room. One of the other gymnasts (whose name eluded Sam for the moment) took that as an invitation to join as well. Sam quickly shook his head no, then pointed at his neck, indicating stiffness. Thankfully, that was enough to get Sam in the bathroom alone./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So Dyad changed how far along I can move along my own string, but they can't locate me faster for you to go through the imaging chamber to see me any sooner?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al took a moment to ponder the question before answering "Actually Sam, that's a very valid question. I'll bring it to the attention of our relatively new benefactors next time I see someone in charge."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam was actually taken aback by how mature Al had responded to that, not that the retired Admiral was immature (especially since Sam changed history so that Beth never left him). Sam immediately determined that Al was hiding something./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""You're normally not this calm, much less so supportive of my frustrations. Let me guess, Ziggy doesn't have much information to give me?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al chuckled slightly, then replied "I guess after leaping for this long, you can anticipate anything the first time I come through the door when the leap is early by now. OK, I can only provide you with a city: Sydney, and a date: March 11supth/sup, 2000"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, that narrows it down a little. I wonder why Ziggy can't narrow down which clone I am in, specifically" thought Sam out loud./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well Sam, there were a lot of clones adopted here that are still around in 2000. We still don't know how many were made in the 1980's, even Ziggy can't access that level of Dyad information." explained Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OHHH, I do have a name: Alex Williams." said Sam, mildly upset with himself that he couldn't have remembered that sooner for his best friend and hologram monitor./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OK, that should help narrow things down a fair bit as female clones who go by male names would be rare, I'm assuming. Got it, Alex Williams of Perth, Australia. Interesting, you're pre-Olympic at only 15 or 16 years old" said Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Actually, if I remember the Olympics correctly, they tend to go a bit younger in Gymnastics. Some of the medal winners are actually younger than my host. And Perth is a fair bit away from Sydney, but I'm guessing that she had to relocate here in order to have better training facilities. Australia is not exactly a powerhouse in Gymnastics, male or female" quipped Sam pragmatically./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""You're right Sam, they've never made it to the podium in the entire 20supth/sup century, even when the city of Melbourne hosted in 1956. Ziggy says that your relocation theory is right too. Pity, but at least she didn't have to change citizenships like Lennox Lewis" said Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Who?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""He was a boxer. He won the Super Heavyweight Gold in 1988 as a Canadian, but switched to England when he turned professional, probably the last great heavyweight fighter in boxing with everyone going into Mixed Martial Arts nowadays. Anyways, this is not your typical leap, Sam" stated Al assertively./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I gave up on the theory of a typical leap years ago. And what do you mean? I'm supposed to ensure Alex make it to the Olympics, right?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""That would be nice, as she would at least have home-field advantage. Ziggy says nope, there's a 90.4 % chance that you're here to take a dive and end her career." said Al, sadly./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""End her career? That sounds like something that those stupid evil leapers would've done on the TV show. Then again, I can't blame the writers on that one. It's only fair that I would have some kind of counterpart. But still Al, I find it horrible that I'm here to ruin a teenager's dream"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Listen Sam, Dyad is very paranoid about their clones achieving any major success or even minor. Because if the media picks it up, and another clone sees 'themselves' doing something, they could progress to self-awareness almost immediately"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Images began flashing through Sam's mind of the previous leap: Specifically, the fact that several clones were massacred all throughout Europe (Mostly Finland) because they had become self-aware. Sam did not personally see self-awareness in any of the clones as a problem, but knew the consequences if he openly defied the leap parameters. He would now begin working in secret to help the clones discover each other, but knew he couldn't tell Ziggy or even Al of what he was going to do./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So if Alex gets even close to the medal podium, enough people are going to see her that the entire clone operation goes public, Dyad hits the abort button and has to kill several hundred teenagers, their families, their friends, their monitors, their handlers. This would be a worldwide massacre of a few thousand people. Helsinki, but for the entire planet" whispers Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al was, astonished, asking "How are you not having physical symptoms from leaping into someone with copied DNA and your brain is not as Swiss-cheesed as usual?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Maybe recalibrating one fixed the other?" suggested Sam. Al opened his mouth to post a counterargument, but he had none, he nodded at Sam rather than say anything./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Al, as this is just a practice (no matter what the coach said when I first leapt in here), can I at least nail this routine? Or do I have to botch this one in order to leap into the next clone right away?" Sam asked. Al (perhaps out of morbid curiosity) punched what Sam just asked into Ziggy's handlink. "No dice Sam, you would be laughed out of sporting altogether and be unable to hold a job, culminating in Alex dying homeless and alcoholic (probably undetected by Dyad as they're not as efficient here in regards to watching over their clones as they are on other continents). Botch the qualifier and you will at least keep her alive and safe into adulthood with a decent job."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OK, so I can't screw up too early. How am I going to do a floor routine of near-Olympic calibre when I have no experience in Gymnastics?"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al immediately sprung into action with Ziggy. A minute later, a series of blue laser lines sprung out all over as Al and Sam left the bathroom and returned to the mat. The laser lines then went all over the mat, starting at a red dot on the corner that was at the diagonal opposite of where Sam and Al were standing./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, Ziggy has come a long way since we had to draw lines on the table to teach me how to shoot pool." remarked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al nodded and replied "And one thing about Dyad: They're not restricting how much electricity we need like the U.S. government did"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Williams, it's all fixed now. Ready when you are" said the coach firmly. Sam nodded in acknowledgement as he took his place on the corner of the mat. Sam giggled at the replacement mat being a different colour (Black) to every other mat on the floor (Blue) as Al put the laser lines back up for only Sam to see. He looked downward and saw footprints leading to a second red dot. Sam took this as how far he had to run before the first jump. Sam then memorized the twists quickly, then started running. When his left foot hit the second red dot, he dove into a handstand, pushed off, intentionally contorted his body in mid-air in order to make 3 complete corkscrews (thus the 1080 degrees). Sam was momentarily frightened as the third corkscrew came as he was on his way down, leaving him less than 4 feet in which to make the landing. He made it, but had to take one tiny step back which he knew the coach would yell at him over as that would be a crucial points deduction if a medal were on the line./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""That was great Williams, but next time: get more height so you can land with both of your feet together" said the coach, but Sam more or less ignored him as he was still in shock that he made the routine at all. Quite frankly, so was Al who had been centred away from the mat, but was now at Sam's side once again./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Good thing the TV show was wrong in my body switching too. Otherwise I would've broken everything."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Sam, as we have to take a dive eventually: I hope you fail with flying colours"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam and Al laughed./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emProject Quantum Clone Leap, New Mexico/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emCurrent Date: November 15supth/sup, 2011/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Beth Calavicci had a few hours downtime before her next duties on the project, and she used them to clean up her and her husbands quarters. Not much needed to be done, mainly some dusting, so she'd likely unwind with a glass of wine and her playlist of music that was uploaded into Ziggy's data banks. That was her plan until Al walked in, looking like he had just seen a ghost./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""What's wrong, my love?" she asked./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Nothing, my dear. How's Alex adjusting to the waiting room?" said Al in a desperate attempt to change the subject./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, she was very frightened when she first got here. In what I think is a first, she actually got more scared as she heard herself talk in Sam Beckett's voice. Why is it that after all these leaps, this is the first one where the voice is what sets them off?" asked Beth./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""My guess? They're so disoriented that they don't even notice what they sound like at first. That said, I concede that we were long overdue for this" answered Al, matter of factly, then he asked "Did you have to sedate her?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Beth shook her head immediately, "No. It was a weird request that she made that calmed her down. She asked to have all of the furniture removed from the room...and they she started to...practice. She was doing standing cartwheels at the same time that Sam was doing her Olympic qualifying routine, and it got her to remember everything back home. We can always put the furniture back in after she's gone. Now tell me Al, what's wrong?" she asked sternly./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al knew that he had no choice but to drop the bombshell: "Sam remembered the previous leap better than usual and for the first time since Dyad changed things so that Sam can only leap into the clones, Sam is not having any physical symptoms of leaping into a clone like he did with Sarah, Krystal and Rachel"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Beth's eyes widened as she spoke "Ziggy, summon Sammi Jo at once"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Samantha arrived a few minutes later, not caring that she still gets called Sammi Jo from time to time. Al had less trouble explaining what was going on about Sam to Sam's daughter than he had in confiding to his own wife. It was now Sammi Jo's turn to be surprised./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""What's the matter?" asked Al and Beth simultaneously./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""We haven't done any calibrations since Dad was in that corporate bitch, Rachel. So...Dad is remembering things purely on his own."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Each of them recalled back to 1999 when Sam leapt into 3 different times to help Abigail Fuller at different points in her life, with the second one ensuring Sammi Jo's existence. It didn't matter that it was only Sam's brain that had switched with Abigail's then fiance, it was the only time a leap directly lead to the conception of a child, and for everyone involved, that was enough to make Sammi Jo Fuller-Beckett the daughter of Sam Beckett. Sammi Jo only had one set of memories, whereas Beth and Al's memories had been altered so many times due to time travel that they lost count of how many timelines that they saw in their minds./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Do you remember the theory that you mentioned as to how bring your father home?" asked Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sammi Jo looked up to the ceiling for a moment, then replied "I do. I actually have 2 theories to bring him home these days. The first is to leap Al into someone in the vicinity of where Sam is, then deliberately arrange an event where they have to either simo-leap in a manner similar to when Sam leapt into a mental patient or die. The second theory is the probability of getting Sam home is actually proportionate to how close he is to the present day which may explain why he is always AT LEAST a few years behind us on the project, because God, Fate or whatever doesn't just want Sam to 'run out the clock'. So we would have to figure out how effectively cheat the random variable that is the string of Sam Beckett's life. I've actually been thinking of the second one more in recent weeks because the string's starting point is now the date of conception of the first clone. With the exception of the original source of DNA, I would put it no earlier than April 1983. But I digress, it's either leap Al and trigger a miracle that could kill both of them or cheat a system that may or may not be controlled by forces beyond our comprehension."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Beth and Al thought about both theories, but it was Beth who spoke first: "Leaping Al would have more risk than that. First off, we still haven't worked out all of the problems with the retrieval system or we would have Sam home by now. So with that, if we leap Al into anyone, we would have 48 hours at most to bring him back as a failsafe in case we can't pull off the mission (which Al might not even remember if HIS brain is swiss-cheesed) or Al starts leaping randomly (which makes our job exponentially harder given how much less data there is for Ziggy to work with before 1953 as evidenced by the leap where Sam and Al switched places). Secondly, Al is 77 years old and even though he quit smoking cigars a long time ago, the amount of energy needed to leap Al could also kill him, because of his age. Frankly, and I've been putting this off for a while now to protect Donna and the rest of the Quantum Leap project: I don't know how much longer Sam can take the leaping process. With each leap, it becomes more probable that the energy of the leap itself is what kills Sam. I'm not exactly a genius when it comes to the math side of things, but I would put Sam at having less than 10 or 12 years to live."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Actually Dr. Calavicci the shortening of the string and my refit from Dyad to be more energy efficient has changed that deadline to 27 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 4 days, give or take an hour. And to answer what I assume is your next question, it is with 99.3% certainty that the energy efficiency calibrations are what is also improving Dr. Beckett's memory functions. But getting back to your original discussion: I don't think the latter option of cheating the uncertainty principle that is which point of the string Sam lands is particularly appealing either. If he doesn't come close enough to his own present day, Dr. Beckett would be compelled to complete yet another mission and then he would leap again. I don't even need to assign a probability on this, with Sam Beckett being alive, that is a constant. Conversely, he could also come too close to the present."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I...fail to see the problem in that, Ziggy. If Sam comes only a few minutes behind his present moment, short of an event of major historic significance, Sam just sits back and does nothing other than physically travel back here to New Mexico from wherever he leapt. And that's assuming he doesn't auto-leap back into himself once he reaches his present."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Admiral, Sam auto-leaping back into himself upon reaching his present moment has always been a theory, at most. If he doesn't, he's still 'home' but his mind is permanently in another body and someone else is eternally trapped inside Sam. And even that is on the assumption that he wouldn't just be leaped into someone else for failure to complete a mission. Now, if Sam leapt close enough to the present to 'wait it out', travelled back here, then simo-leaped with whoever's stuck inside him, we MIGHT be able to switch them back with a very differently calibrated system...but even that's only an exact 50% chance. The other half of that is 2 people who are already 'in each other', as it were, would cause the entire system to cause an explosion big enough to equal 50 times the size of Hiroshima..." Ziggy then intentionally paused to let the humans finish the sentence./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""...And with a lot of our components being nuclear, the entire Southwest of the United States and parts of Mexico become uninhabitable for life as we know it for up to several hundred million years." said Al, who then made a pause of his own before suggesting "let's start drafting teams to work on each theory in secret...not even Dyad knows"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Agreed" whispered everyone, including Ziggy./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam had somehow figured out the his host, Alex Skinner was merely a "floor girl" and had no realistic chance of representing the national team in any of the other disciplines. That was why he actually went first when it came to the floor rehearsals. The coach seemed to have a protocol of "everyone watches everyone else" when it comes to the national team, and Sam respected that as he followed similar protocol in sports he played while he was in school. He had learned the names of the rest of his team in his downtime, as that would likely help in his mission (as it always did) in the making of friends./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Brooke Walker and Alexandra Cloak were the first 2 gymnasts after Sam to do the floor routine, and both of them took a larger step in the dismount than Sam did (which Sam was actually relieved, as that meant that even in his first try, he wasn't the worst by any means). Next was Melinda Cleland, and she had even less height in the jump than Sam did. The coach laid into her verbally, not out of anger, but out of worry that she may seriously injure herself. Sam didn't hear everything that the coach said, but it was something to the effect of Melinda would've broken her leg if she had any less rotation in the jump. Melinda then snapped at the coach, screaming that she was a balance beam specialist. The coach actually backed off (which lead Sam to ask himself if she was the best on the beam, of the whole team)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: underline;"Act 2/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emDyad Institute Corporate Office: Sydney, Australia Branch/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"emspan style="text-decoration: none;"Current Date: November 15/spansupspan style="text-decoration: none;"th/span/supspan style="text-decoration: none;", 2011/span/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"Marion Bowles very rarely ventured below the equator /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"in her career/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;", nor did any of the major executive members of the Dyad Institute. Professionally speaking, there was no real need to. Personally however, Marion thought that it was a mistake. It wasn't until after all of the first generation fertilized female embryos from the cloning project were put into willing surrogates that someone realized that there was a large bias of fertilized Leda clones in the northern hemisphere in comparison to the southern hemisphere. Marion had no idea how many people in the project were "liquidated" (IE. terminated) as a result of this clerical error, but she guessed it was over a dozen people, at least. Marion Bowles even showing up /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"in the Australian office caused every employee /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"in the building/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;" to feel great unease, as it had been years since anyone from outside the country with the right level of clearance /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"paid them a visit/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;" (save for a few employees from the New Zealand office once about every 3 months or so, and only then because their office was even more of a glorified outpost than Australia's office was). Marion tried her best not to smirk at any of them, as it would give her away that she was there for a VERY long overdue spring cleaning of the office (namely, a lot of "corporate downsizing")./span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So, when was the last time that any of the senior partners bothered to come down under?" asked Marion./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""2004, when the cloned lassies all turned 20, albeit on different dates." replied a man in a grey suit Marion only knew as "Mickey Jr."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""7 years? It's been 7 years since someone even close to my level of authority from topside bothered to come on down here?" she asked, barely containing her outrage./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;""/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"And you guys didn't come down here all that much before that, either. There was that incident back in 2000 when you had that cleaner guy ready to slaughter everyone, but we're assuming /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"that /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"you called it off, /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"as they're all still here/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"" replied Mick./span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Marion silently assumed that someone of similar power to her called in Ferdinand and probably a couple of others to terminate the whole continent of clones and all associated with them. She then smiled briefly, realizing that Dr. Leekie's gamble in buying Project Quantum Leap recently was already having some benefits to the Leda clones on a temporal level./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So, why exactly are you here? If you're waiting to answer that question to someone of a higher clearance, forget it. I'm it" asked and asserted Mick./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Long overdue performance reviews of all of the monitors and their handlers over the previous 2 decades. Well, the ones who are still alive, anyway" said Marion with a dejected sigh./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""To what end?" asked Mick, who then gulped, realizing he might now be the next Dyad employee to be killed for even thinking of asking that question./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;""/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"There are more gaps in the information sent to topside then there were gaps in the DNA of the dinosaurs of that movie we gave money to Spielberg in the early 1990's so that he could spread propaganda for us in order to dissuade anyone from trying to clone anything without our approval" said Marion, slightly agitated./span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;""/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"Gaps? What gaps?" asked Mick, basically realizing that as he's probably already dead /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"on account of his big mouth/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;", he may as well go all the way with it./span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"Marion began laughing in a way that suggested that she had been waiting for an opportunity to emasculate someone. "Where do I even begin? /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"Missed /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"biannual/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;" medical tests, incomplete /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"monitor/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;" reports, /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"incomplete handler reports,/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;" constant moving around the country /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"without us having enough time to arrange things for the subject /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"to either bring their monitor with them or arrange a new monitor to infiltrates/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;". Shall I go on?"/span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Mick seemed sufficiently put in his place as they walked by a boardroom meeting. Seeing an opportunity to possibly divert Marion's attention, if only for a few moments, Mick said "Seems the New Zealand office has come to visit us as well"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Marion mumbled something to the effect of "We really need to improve the Auckland office." before she pressed her Dyad I.D. badge to an electronic sensor to open the door, leaned slightly forward and announced "New Zealand, you guys can go home. All of you keep immaculate data on your clones, I see no need to audit any of you. In fact, use the Australian office's jet. I know it's nicer than yours"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Mick looked away, knowing that his plan to throw another country under the bus had just backfired./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I brought in a team to do my auditing for me. I don't have time for this crap personally, I'm off to Japan to oversee a clone trade."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"Mick understood what the term "clone trade" meant: It meant that 2 clones from different countries /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"were planning to be switched to the /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"other /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"country. It often meant a change in monitors and other arrangements made so that neither of the clones saw each other or raised any questions from outsiders /span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;"(the monitors themselves were also kept in the dark on purpose)/span/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"span style="text-decoration: none;". But Mick's main thought was seething jealousy that New Zealand was a more respected office than his Australian office. Then Marion's cell phone went off./span/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Ferdinand, hello, thanks for calling. Yeah, I'm heading to the airport for Tokyo soon. No, I'm just auditing Australia. There's no need to clean the country..."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Mick breathed a sigh of relief./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""...yet."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Mick gulped./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emI woke up on the bottom half of a bunk bed, relieved that I wasn't sleeping on the top half (still scared of heights and all). No one is in the bed with me (or Al would already be here, married or not) but I've deduced that we're all bunking together in an effort to save money. It's a great idea, but we're the host nation, shouldn't the host nation be pumping extra money to each of its' teams? Then again, I always heard that Montreal took somewhere around a third of a century to pay off THEIR Olympics, so maybe the games are more expensive than I thought./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"The whooshing sound of the imaging chamber door was heard by Sam, and Al entered the scene. Sam was not exactly sure as to when he stopped being blinded by the light behind Al every time he entered the room as a holographic projection, but it saved a few awkward conversations like ones that had occurred in the past. One thing that Sam still saw though, was the expression on Al's face: one that was very, very nervous./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""What's wrong Al?" whispered Sam. Sam knew that his "teammates" were all still asleep. Sam wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Nothing. Is Alex Williams public? No, that's a dumb question. If the answer were yes, you'd be leaping into someone else nearby to fix it. Actually, I don't even know if that theory applies anymore as you're limited to the clones now."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""What's the point of keeping the clones in the dark about their own lives if they're effectively manipulated into leading private lives for the sake of keeping the whole project secret?" asked Sam. Then Sam noticed that the expression on the face of his best friend got worse. "Al, you're hiding something. What is it?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al made a non-verbal gesture, trying to indicate that answering the question was still a breach in Quantum Leap protocol./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Al, I've lost all hope of ever getting back and with the project out of the hands of the U.S. government now, most if not all of the Project rules (including my own) don't really apply anymore."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Then Al proclaimed "Oh, the hell with it. Sammi Jo has stated 2 different theories as to how to get you home, as she seems to be as desperate to see her father as you once were to get home."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam was completely unfazed by this, as he still remembered that he had conceived a child a long time ago who was now on the project's payroll. "That's great Al, what are they?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al struggled for a moment to recall both of them, then he snapped his fingers and began talking "The first is to leap me into someone near you, then deliberately arrange an event where we have to either simo-leap in a manner similar to when you leapt into a mental patient or die. #2 is the probability of getting you home is actually proportionate to how close you are to the present day which may explain why you're always a few years behind us on the project, because God, Fate or whatever doesn't just want you to 'run out the clock' in an effort to go home. So we would have to figure out how effectively cheat the random variable that is the string of your life, or now, the lives of the clones you leap into. So you're probably never leaping before April 1983 ever again."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam was quick to respond "Unless I leap into the original, who I suspect is at least 10 years older than the clones. Frankly, I'm not in favour of either theory. Regarding the first one: While the TV show based on this never got a lot of the details right, I do remember they got me holding onto Alia when we simo-leaped out of the drag race correct (even if it was someone else entirely on a leap that was never made into an episode). We held onto each other, and we leaped into those female prisoners together. That's what likely to happen if we did something even remotely similar, and I can't live with you leaping from life to life randomly on my conscience. Us switching places after the mental institution leap was bad enough. Regarding the second one: It's too risky. If we cheat the destination variable by too much, we can't react fast enough to me running out the clock, even me sitting in an open field can still kill me, especially since I'm not even a middle aged man anymore. I actually have a third theory: Wait until I'm at the beginning of my string again, or back at Al's place, if you prefer. As I would be at the beginning of my string, it will be easier for the retrieval circuits to get me back."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Which...is probably impossible for you to reach anymore, in light of you being limited to the lifetimes of a group of clones that were all born in 1984. Still, it's nice to know we now have a few options to get you home, even if they're very risky ones" said Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"A girl Sam knew to be Lisa Skinner then woke up and mumbled "Time to hit the gym" in a half-asleep tone of voice./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"It was still very early in the morning, so early that the sun still wasn't up yet. Also, the Australian national gymnastics team were the only ones in the gym that weren't staff members. Sam liked the isolation, but didn't like that none of the gymnasts were on a formal exercise program today, so long as they did something. Al was at Sam's side, and politely waited for the rest of the team to be far enough away before he began listening to Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OK Al, what is the best program for a gymnast to do solo?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Ziggy says that mat work, aerobics, cardio and yoga would be optimal. Order doesn't really matter" replied Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I'll start with Yoga then." mumbled Sam, who then headed east inside the gym as he noticed a room through a nearby window with mats similar to the ones that the team's coach used for formal training (only these ones were white). Sam was relieved that no one else on the team joined him, and Al projected a holographic video loop of several Yoga poses of varying difficulty. Sam nodded at Al, as if to say he now memorized all of the poses (and their order) and began the first one: splits between 2 parallel benches./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""What happened in the original history, Al?" asked Sam. He merely asked out of a matter of habit, and was actually scared to know anything beyond the revelation that all of the Australian clones were executed because of one clone's success./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""In the original history, Alex won the gold medal in the floor routine and was eventually awarded a bronze medal in the Women's team event after China was stripped of their medal due to a failed drug test (all of them were on crystal meth). The subsequent hype backlash forced Dyad to terminate every clone in Australia, New Zealand and all of their adopted family, friends, loved ones, monitors and handlers. Worst part of all, this won't even be the last time Dyad sabotages the career of a potential Olympic medal winner in the name of keeping this project a secret. A couple of years from now, an American clone by the name of Jennifer Fitzsimmons will have her swimming career sabotaged by a bad training program put together by her coach, which Ziggy says that there's a 91.4% chance that both her monitor and yours at some point are your coaches."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""At some point?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, people move to go to college or for new jobs, so in an effort to keep the clones in the dark, some monitors get left behind and when the clone arrives at their new town, a new monitor infiltrates their lives. Actually, in some cases it's more like 2 or 3 potential monitors try to infiltrate their lives at the same time and the clone is allowed to 'pick' which one wins. This clone stuff is getting creepier every day. That would be like our project changing who is in the imaging chamber every leap. You'd eventually go insane, or die of an aneurysm due to the stress in your brain." ranted Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Sam then switched to a new pose, lifting himself up with the palms of his hands despite sitting on the mat Indian style./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""How do I botch this for Alex without destroying her life so badly that she might as well be dead?" asked Sam, making sure that Al got the message that they should've answered this question long ago. Al turned Ziggy around and showed Sam the display, which showed "Injure Alex at the next practice, 97.3% probability."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, that seems simple enough. As long as it's not her neck or back or anything else that's vital" declared Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Break a leg, only literally this time" added Al. Sam did chuckle for a moment, then asked "Wait, will that mean I break my own leg?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""No. Remember, it's only your mind that leaps. The TV show got that wrong, especially in the last 2 seasons. If you did break your leg, you would feel some kind of phantom pain. But it wouldn't be real."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Hmmm, OK. Maybe just a shoulder and/or ankle injury then" said Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: underline;"Act 3/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emDyad Institute Corporate Office: Sydney, Australia Branch/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"emspan style="text-decoration: none;"Current Date: November 1/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"6/spansupspan style="text-decoration: none;"th/span/supspan style="text-decoration: none;", 2011/span/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Dr. Aldous Leekie didn't like being in any basement, let alone one that was this dusty. But he decided to immerse himself in his work as a means of distracting himself from his suroundings./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Why did Miss Bowles send you?" asked Mick as he entered the basement./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""My speciality is in data collection. You have a lot of skipped data that needs collecting. Or would you rather have a cleaner in here instead?" said Dr. Leekie without even looking at Mick./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""No, you'll do nicely. How can I be of any assistance?" asked Mick in what he knew was probably a futile attempt to save his life and career./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Get a feather duster out of the janitor's closet. Otherwise, you are of no use to me." replied Dr. Leekie./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;"Mick seemed sufficiently put in his place, and left Dr. Leekie alone. Dr. Leekie wasn't exaggerating when it came to how dusty the room was. In fact, if anything, he was understating it. The layer of dust on some of these boxes was over half an inch thick, indicating that some of this information had remained hidden for over a decade. Part of Dr. Leekie's mind was outraged /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"that an oversight of this magnitude had occurred, another of him was in a childlike state of euphoria that he essentially found one of the few "lost treasures" that Dyad had mistakenly allowed. The data was catalogued in this basement, organized by the names of each clone that had ever lived or stayed in Australia, and then alphabetically by last name. "Why was all this information not destroyed if it wasn't put into Dyad's main database?" he asked himself. /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"Then his cell phone went off, a new Blackberry. He knew the number well:/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;""Marion, How's Japan? Good. Yeah I found the files in their basement. No, Mick was as useless as you said he would be. I must admit, for missing files, they were organized very well. No, By Clone and then alphabetically by last name. I actually just asked myself that. You think that it's the Proletheans syphoning off info from us? Well, that would certainly make everything make sense, but that means someone in this office is a double agent. That means we'll have to investigate the entire continent. Monitors, handlers, everyone. I could oversee the investigation myself...or, you could bring in a team of specialists /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"to run the investigation. Am I just imputing the data into Dyad's main database? Yes, I can put everything into Ziggy too. It won't take me much longer to do that too. Yeah, I can handle some constructive criticism. Wow, you're against my decision for Dyad to have purchased Project Quantum Leap. How could you be? Time travel is the ultimate insurance policy for the clones. Any mistake we have made or anyone else has made we can go back and fix. Well, I'll get the info into Dyad and Ziggy on the double. Leekie out"/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So anyways, that's his theory: Wait until he's back at Al's place and then we retrieve him. He believes that it'll be easier to bring him back if he's at the beginning of his string." said Al in the rarely used Project Quantum Leap boardroom. The room was white and sterile, like the waiting room, but there was a long black wooden table with 8 leather chairs. Everyone who wasn't Al sunk their heads onto the table, over various emotional states. It was Sammi Jo who rose and spoke first:/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""The first major obstacle in that is how difficult it is to find him when he is there. He's been there 7 times and each time wasn't easy to find him, especially the first time. I wasn't as involved with the project back then as I am now, but I remember how much of a headache it caused Gooshie, especially the first time. I grant that it has gotten a little easier each time, but not enough to try something like this."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"It was Tom who spoke second, mildly annoyed at his niece "I disagree. As we know where he goes every time he leaps to his exact birthday, once we get past the initial resistance in locating him, the retrieval of him should actually be pretty easy. It's probably the best chance that we have"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Third to speak was Dr. Beeks "But also probably the riskiest. Every leap strains Dr. Beckett psychologically. If we try to retrieve him from the farthest point of the string, he may be strained so much mentally that we'll have to commit him for real. And that's if he doesn't have an aneurysm and die with in 60 seconds of him getting home."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Donna Elysee-beckett merely threw her hands up in the air and said "I've sat on the sidelines too long. We HAVE to do something"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I'm with my stepmother on this one" said Sammi Jo, while nodding in approval to Donna./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Attention everyone" announced Ziggy, who almost sounded like she was trying to stop the conflict in the project from escalating into a physical one (and also wanting to distract them from ever fighting like this again)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Go ahead, Zigs" said Tom, basically figuring out the subtext behind what the parallel hybrid computer was trying to, and allowing the computer to do it./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Dr. Aldous Leekie was not only successful in finding the missing data from the Australian Leda Clones, but I am beginning to receive his findings. It will likely be several hours before I receive everything, and that is assuming everything was stored in one place and not at least partly destroyed." announced Ziggy to everyone./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Do you have reason to believe that the missing data was scattered across multiple locations?" asked Sammi Jo./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I had actually calculated 313 different possible locations for the missing data in Australia alone. They had to be locations big enough to accommodate a decent percentage of the data plus be far enough away from an internet connection for Dyad to overlook. Otherwise someone would have just found it and put it back into Dyad's main database themselves."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""So, where did it end up being?" asked Donna./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""In the basement of their Sydney office. Literally the most obvious of all 313 possible locations. I'm actually surprised that it wasn't searched first. Based on elapsed time, I think it was approximately 35th"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"As usual, no one wanted to argue with Ziggy./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emIt had been a few hours since I last saw Al or Ziggy drawing out my floor routine for me via holographic imagery. I don't have quite the eidetic memory that I used to, which I attribute to age. But the fact that I remember more of my leaps and my pre-leap life (subject to a bunch of double images as I've changed my own past a few times from my own leaps) is a very fair trade off for me./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al came through the imaging chamber to find Sam all alone in the Australian gymnastics team's rehearsal team. He was actually a little relieved, as it was one of the uncommon times that both he and Sam could have a conversation that was close to normal./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Hi Sam, have you figured out how to screw up properly?" asked Al./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""span style="font-style: normal;"I have, /spanspan style="font-style: normal;"actually/spanspan style="font-style: normal;". I'm going to not rotate enough in the corkscrew so that I land awkwardly. Somewhere between a 920 degree rotation and a 1020 degree rotation should suffice. Anything less than 920 degrees and I'll likely land on my head and break Alex's neck. Anything more than 1020 degrees and that's too close to the normal routine and I'll probably just have a normal landing minus a point deduction /spanspan style="font-style: normal;"for taking one step back/spanspan style="font-style: normal;"." said Sam, sounding a bit regretful that he couldn't be more precise with his 6 doctorates./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Well, this won't make you feel any better: I presented your theory to the rest of the project. You split them down the middle. I'm sorry Sam. At least if they had all gone against you, you'd have a more definitive answer"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""No, don't be sorry, Al. I was the one who stepped into the project accelerator back in 1995 prematurely and against the advice of everyone on the project, and look where that got me. I don't blame them for questioning my words, theories or actions anymore. I may have done so in the past, but I find it healthy now, for the most part."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al could tell that Sam was depressed in saying that. It sounded more like Sam was just going through the motions and willing to let the rest of the project have a more pronounced opinion in his leaping. He decided to switch to a slightly more pleasant topic: "We've located the missing data. And I have to give Dyad credit, as they're uploading the data into their own database and Ziggy at the same time."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Can you run my under rotation theory by Ziggy?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Oh sure" as Al began punching a few buttons in lieu of using the bluetooth interface (old habits die hard). "Ziggy agrees with you, but the closer you get to 970 degrees without going over or under, the better your idea works"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OK. The sad irony about this is that unlike nearly every other leap I've ever done, I can't really practice failing without risking the permanent injury or worse before it's time to inflict permanent injury." said Sam in a rare display of dark humour. Al was a little uneasy about Sam turning to laughter, but joined in eventually anyway./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: underline;"Act 4/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Marion Bowles was looking forward to a quiet flight to Japan, that was not what she received. Even someone as high up in topside was not allowed to turn off her phone under any circumstances, even when she was on an airplane. Originally she was amused from all of the text messages sharing an international area code from Australia, but eventually she became annoyed enough to answer them after sifting through them all./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"span style="text-decoration: none;"They all said essentially the same thing: /spanemspan style="text-decoration: none;"N/span/ememspan style="text-decoration: none;"one of the monitors or handlers in Australia could be traced as having ties to the Proletheans or any other organization potentially harmful to Dyad./span/em span style="text-decoration: none;"Marion accepted that as the truth /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"(as it /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"was/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;" multiple sources) and writes /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"down/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;" in her official report that the missing data went missing due to mass carelessness /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"on the part of the staff/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;", /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"nothing more. After half an hour of writing down the report to hand to topside officials in Japan, she wrote down her conclusion that everyone in the Australia/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"n office/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;" should receive a full reprimand with no additional punishment unless an individual has reached 3 reprimands (which usually results in their death "being made to look like an accident"). Not knowing what to do with herself for the rest of the flight, she decided to call Project Quantum Leap (against her better judgement) directly in order to get an update /spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"on the data upload/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;".../span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"...forgetting until it was too late that she would have to talk to their parallel hybrid computer. She didn't know how to talk to Ziggy, but quickly realized that few humans on the planet did./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Good Afternoon, Marion Bowles. The corporate cabal you have amassed is quite impressive. Dyad, Brightborn..." started Ziggy./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""...Project Quantum Leap." finished Marion, slightly scared that a machine that was at least 16 years old probably knew her entire profile (both on and off Dyad's books)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Touche, Miss Bowles. How can I be of assistance?" asked Ziggy./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I would just like an update as to how far along the data upload into...you...has come, if you please." stated Marion./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Certainly, Miss Bowles. The upload is approximately 75% complete. Frankly, an oversight of this magnitude given your reputation is inexcusable." stated Ziggy quite bluntly. Marion sighed deeply, knowing that despite her apprehensions regarding Dyad purchasing Project Quantum Leap, this oversight would still be an oversight had the purchase not taken place. For that, Marion was grateful (much to her chagrin, it made her angrier at Aldous because on some level, he was right to set the Dyad purchase of Project Quantum Leap into motion)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I'm truly sorry that I allowed the Australia office to be so, nonchalant about how it handled the information gathered on each of the clones. I make no excuses for them, or for myself" said Marion, who was actually quite sincere in her words to the artificial overseer of what had effectively become Project Leda's time travel division./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Apology accepted. The boost in my ego that came from deflating the egos of you and several other Dyad and Topside employees more than made up for it. Will there be anything else, Miss Bowles?" asked Ziggy, who wasn't even bothering to hide the condescending tone in her voice./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""No, thank you, goodbye" said Marion quickly as she hung up the phone. She noticed 3 new text messages from Australia, and ignored them. Marion was rapidly cycling between her hatred in a machine that outsmarted her verbally and her admiration for Dr. Beckett for making a computer so advanced even by today's standards, much less the standards of the mid-1990's./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emIt is rare for me to have the chance to sleep so well that I end up dreaming something so vivid that I'll probably remember later. I've dreamed of the leap that finally gets me home since I started leaping, but it has changed over the years, as it should. Originally I saw no one but my core team of Al, Gooshie, Tina, Dr. Beeks and the mainframe that is Ziggy. But shortly after, that grew to include Donna when I changed time to make sure that she didn't leave me at the altar, my brother Tom when I ensured his return home from the Vietnam War, Sammi Jo when I conceived her on a leap, Beth when I went back to keep her from leaving Al, then Gooshie left a few years later when Al broke Quantum Leap protocol just to inform me that he had passed away (which I did appreciate very much, as sad as it made me), but the general idea of my return has remained the same in my dreams: First I see my wife as she would want to see me the most, then Sammi Jo, who hasn't talked to me since she was a kid (and I was inside her mother's lawyer at the time), then Beth (to look me over physically), Dr. Beeks (to look me over mentally), Tom (as I haven't seen him since I was in one of the soldiers under his command on the day when he was supposed to be killed) with Al being last (but not least)./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emBut this dream was different, and much, much darker.../em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emNot even a minute after I finish saying hello to everyone on the project inside my own body, Dr. Aldous Leekie (who I still remember from that encounter in the bathroom decades ago, "Clear as Vodka", as Al would say). He seems congratulatory, but I already know his penchant for dishonesty knows no bounds (I could tell that about him even during the starbright party). He pulls out what appears to be a contract with the signatures of every significant living member of Project Quantum Leap on the last page (except for mine, as I was "busy" at the time). He then smugly announces that as I'm officially Dyad property, I'm to go right back into the project accelerator until the day I die. Donna snaps at him that they'll fight it as it was a coerced contract signing. About 50 fully armed mercenaries then storm the project and as soon as Leekie shouts "Spare Sam and Ziggy, execute the rest. Maybe that will teach Dr. Sam Beckett who's really in charge. And before I can jump in the air to at least save someone in the project, or failing that, rob Dr. Leekie of the satisfaction of having me as a leap subject ever again by dying inside my own body. But I'm carted away by several of the mercenaries and am forced to watch everyone I care about be mercilessly shot to death as they do so (Starting with Al, which is a dark irony as he is my monitor). I am then forced to leap, but the energy flow was increased so much that my amnesia is near total, which may be why Ziggy never finds me, leaving me trapped and alone in a clone for nearly 30 years...or maybe Ziggy's ego defied Dr. Leekie and they took her offline out of spite...or maybe that's just what my mind tells me./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emI woke up, needing to go to the practice that will end my host's career. There was no Al to encourage me, and I had to remind myself that that dream wasn't real, and that Al was alive. Still, I can't help but wonder if I'm heading towards that moment in my future. Is this the "other" Al's way of warning me as to what is coming along my string not too far away, or is someone above even him looking out for me? I don't see anyone else awake in the room, I better leave now so I can beat the others./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"em*/em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"It didn't take Sam long to get back to the team's practice area. He even beat the team's coach by about 10 minutes. The coach even had a smile on his face when he saw Sam as Alex./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Williams, you're here early, want to help the setup?" he asked./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""As long I get to do my floor routine first. So I can, you know, get it over with" replied Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Deal. Start with the mats" said the coach. Sam nodded and got to work immediately. It was not only a way to pass the time until Al's next appearance, but it was not very different from when Sam had to handle bales of hay when he was young and still on his family farm in Elk Ridge, Indiana. Except he was doing everything in reverse (unrolling the mats and attaching them to each other as opposed to gathering stray hay and bundling it together). It didn't take long for Sam to do a quarter of the entire space (as there were 3 others performing the task, namely the coach and his 2 assistants, people Sam knew only as "Peter" and "Paul") and the others were close enough to being finished where Sam felt he would just be in their way if he offered to help them. They were done just as Al showed up./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""OK Sam, Ziggy and I have mapped out the whole thing to best injure Alex enough to end her career but not paralyse her for good."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"Al then showed Sam a series of holographic lines, detailing every direction that Sam needed to rotate in, culminating in crashing into the mat. Sam was suitably impressed by Ziggy, specifically as the lines even specified that he had to land on the left hand and ankle in order for the plan to work as Alex Williams was left-handed. Sam nodded and whispered "Thanks Al. Now what's the probability that I screw up so badly that Alex is in a wheelchair for the rest of her life?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Oh, only 3.5%, Sam. Your odds are great" replied Al. Sam politely nodded, but he was pre-occupied in thought over the nightmare he had. He quietly wished that he would just die on a leap, in an effort to keep his dignity and so that he could just avoid that nightmare becoming real all together. After a minute or 2, he snapped out of it, realizing that he hadn't seen Sammi Jo since his leap into Larry Stanton, all those years ago./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""We're waiting, Miss Williams" shouted the coach. Sam nodded and took his spot on the corner. After pushing a few buttons, Al had the routine mapped out over the entire floor instead of just a few feet in front of Sam. Ziggy even made the footprints in red where Sam needed to run in red where the routine itself was in blue. After 3 very deep breaths, Sam began his run (about the only part of the routine that was next to impossible to botch) then made his (non-quantum) leap. He actually was enjoying being in the air until something in his head said "don't forget to under-rotate a little". He obliged, and crashed onto his left side, almost exactly as he was supposed to./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Oh my God, Someone get help!" screamed the coach./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""I'll call an Ambo. Alex, you're gonna be alright" said Lisa Skinner as she grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and ran outside (for a better connection). Sam needed a moment to realize that ambo was Australian slang for Ambulance. On some level, he seemed to feel the pain that Alex would be experiencing if she was alone./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""You did it, Sam. You did it" said Al, but Sam could barely hear him. His focus was on the coach, of all things./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""The ankle looks sprained, the shoulder...yeah, it's out of the socket." said the coach, looking devastated./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Are you hiding that my career is over?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""No, not at all, Alex. Couple of surgeries and a year or two of rehab, you'll be golden for Athens." said the coach while avoiding eye contact./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""That's where the 2004 Olympics are going to be, Sam. Alex gets the surgeries, but her career is over. No one gets close to the medal podium, everyone lives. Lisa actually becomes the first Australian gymnast to be in 3 different Olympics. But everyone moves on to good jobs. You did it, Sam."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Ambo will be here in 5 minutes." shouted Lisa as she came running back inside./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""None of their friends or family get killed?" asked Sam./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT""Nope." replied Al with a smile. Sam decided it was time to tell his best friend about his nightmare, but in a flash of blue light, he vanished./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emThis may be the darkest room that I've ever leapt into. I'll have to use my other 4 senses in order to gain my bearings from an, as usual, disorienting leap. I hear rustling of what I think is a liquid and horns. Am I on a boat in a body of water? I smell...a type of algae that tells me that I'm near a freshwater lake. I taste...sugar, I think my host has a junk food addiction. I feel...metal bars all around me and I'm unable to stand up. So I'm being held captive in a cage that's probably more suitable for a decent sized dog. Without Al coming through the imaging chamber door, this may be all of the information I can get right now./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emOr can I? I also feel like my entire back is an open wound, like my host has many fresh cuts on their back side. I want to say that there's a pattern in the cuts, but thinking about that is a bit disturbing. OK, I need to find a reflective surface. A mirror, a puddle of water, a shiny piece of metal will suffice. After looking around, a flickering light in the distance shows that I have a razor blade of all things in the cage with me, but it's bloody. Does my host self-mutilate? That's unfortunate. Then some of my host's hair falls into my face. It's blonde, unkempt, and reminds me of a fight I had in Helsinki, some time ago./em/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"emOh boy...I'm Helena./em/p 


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